


Art, Death, and Other Insecurities

by caprigender



Series: The adventures of Mica Lynne, Sole Survivor of Vault 111 and esteemed mayor of Trashtown Micatropolis [5]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Gen, Heartfelt Talks, Other, and mutual pining, oh my, pickman angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 19:44:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6297634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caprigender/pseuds/caprigender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She tugged on the door handle for the fifth time, or maybe it was the seventh. Preston hadn’t really been counting, he’d been scanning the room for possible threats. There didn’t seem to be any, but the Gallery still gave him the creeps. It smelled like death, death and rot and some other really twisted shit that he was entirely not interested in. Truth be told, he hated coming back here again and again, but Mica kept doing it and he’d be damned if he would let her do it on her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Art, Death, and Other Insecurities

She tugged on the door handle for the fifth time, or maybe it was the seventh. Preston hadn’t really been counting, he’d been scanning the room for possible threats. There didn’t seem to be any, but the Gallery still gave him the creeps. It smelled like death, death and rot and some other really twisted shit that he was entirely not interested in. Truth be told, he hated coming back here again and again, but Mica kept doing it and he’d be damned if he would let her do it on her own.

The vault dweller in question launched herself against the locked door with a heavy thud. “Open up, Pickman!” She yelled, “Come on! I know you’re in there! Don’t fucking pretend like you’re not!” More banging on the door. More yelling. More tugging on the doorknob.

She’d found she couldn’t pick this lock the second time she’d come back. He didn’t know when that had happened, but it hadn’t been with him and he still wasn’t sure how to feel about that. How many times had she come back here?

“General, come on, that door isn’t going anywhere,” he interrupted her, “Let’s come back later, ok?” He didn’t want to come back ever, but hey, it got her to take a step back.

She glared at the door, her jaw clenched tight and her fingers twitching. For a moment he thought she was going to attack the handle again, but instead she turned heel and headed towards the entrance of the gallery.

Preston decided to chalk that up as some kind of success.

\- - 

“I don’t know why you keep going back there,” he admitted to her later that night. She sat by the campfire, shivering and gripping her pistol in its holster. “It’s clearly messing you up.”

She shrugged, “I gotta talk to him.”

“To who?” he asked, “Pickman? Cause I don’t think he really wants to talk to you, General. No offense.” He sat down next to her. “Besides, I’m not really sure you two have all that much in common. Not sure that’d be a helpful conversation.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. Still tense. Still not talking. That second one wasn’t common, usually she would be talking up a storm. She always said a campfire wasn’t complete without a story or a song. But that never seemed to be the case after she’d been to the Gallery. “What do you need to talk to him about?”

“I… I don’t know. I just have a few questions to ask him, I guess.”

“What kinda questions?”

“You really wanna be asking me this, PG?” she snapped, “Look, I get it, you’re too good for this shit and you don’t approve and all that but I’m dealing with some shit and I need to ask this fucking creep some goddamn questions.”

Preston winced, “Sorry I asked.”

Mica sighed, “Fuck, I’m sorry, Pres. I’m just… I’m scared and I don’t like going back there but…” She looked on the verge of tears again and Preston wasn’t sure how to respond to that. God, he had a hard enough time trying to figure out (read: bury and ignore) his own emotions. The general was an atom bomb of reactions that he had no idea how to deal with. “I just have to make sure that’s never gonna be me.”

Preston blinked as he tried to comprehend what she’d just said. “Who, Pickman? You becoming Pickman?” He stifled a laugh in a cough. “I don’t think that’s gonna happen, General.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Are you really worried about this?” She nodded, deathly serious it seemed. Preston frowned, “I’m not sure I understand. You really think you could do that to a person? You don’t seem like the type. No offense, general, but you’re a very… sensitive person.”

She snickered. At least it had gotten her smiling again. “Thanks, P. I appreciate it, I really do, but…” He expected her to finish with a laugh and a snarky “you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about” but she didn’t. She just looked down at the dirt and the concrete and shuffled her feet a bit.

The fire crackled in their silence. Usually she’d have the radio on. The music would drift out through the night as they ate and sang along. They were getting pretty good at harmonizing together. Sometimes she joked that the Minutemen should get a choir going, just to shake things up. Preston wasn’t quite sure anyone else would agree to that and as much as he liked singing with her out in the wastes, performing was an entirely different beast. The wind shifted and for a moment the two of them were enveloped in smoke. At least that night the fire was more wood than trash.

“I’d never shot anyone before I got out of cryosleep,” Mica’s voice was soft and small, “I mean, Nate taught me how to shoot. He was pretty damn insistent that both Marni and I learn how to use a gun if we were going to have them in the house, but shooting ranges are worlds away from real life.” She sighed. “I used to know what I could and couldn’t do. I knew I couldn’t kill animals. That wasn’t in the realm of possibility for me. I was mostly sure I couldn’t kill humans and if I ever did it would be self-defense. But the world turned upside down and now I’m seeking people out to put them down and sure I might think that I’d never torture anyone to death, but just a few months ago I never would have imagined myself doing any of the things that are now… normal.”

Preston turned to look at her, “You’d really never shot anyone before the war?”

“Surprising right?” She asked. Her voice dripped with sarcasm, “A stone cold killer like me.”

“It is a little surprising,” he said, “You handled yourself really well first time I saw you.”

She shrugged. “You didn’t see the four-hour bout of panic that came after. At least, I think it was four hours. Time gets a little blurry.”

Preston nodded. She’d talked about the panic attacks before, he’d even been there for a few, but he hadn’t really thought about what it must have been like for her before she’d had him and other people to lean on. At least she’d had Dogmeat with her. That had probably helped.

“I’ve hunted ever since I could hold a gun,” he offered. Maybe he wasn’t the best at sharing personal stories, but here… it seemed relevant. It seemed like something she needed to hear from him. “I was the oldest kid in my family and we needed food so my Mom and I would go out and hunt radstag and mole rats every once in a while. But most of the time I was just supposed to know how to protect the farm from wild dogs.” He glanced over at the general, she was staring at him intently. He stumbled over his words and looked back at the campfire instead. “Mom was in the Minutemen. She thought it was really important that all the settlers were able to count on each other. I begged her to let me go out on missions with her all the time, but she didn’t want me to have to shoot a person or even a feral before she thought I was really ready for it. Said it was another thing entirely. Said that it changed you and it wasn’t good to be shooting at people too young.” A charred wooden board snapped in the fire, scattering embers around at their feet. “She was right, though. Shooting people is different. It’s pretty messed up, but sometimes it’s what has to be done around here.” He stared into the fire and braced for impact. The general always had a response for everything. He couldn’t predict what it was going to be but he knew it was coming any minute now, some heartfelt emotional rant that he wouldn’t know how to react to. Any minute now.

She shifted next to him, scooting closer, and leaned to rest her head against his shoulder. She was warm and soft, even through the thick material of his coat. And there she’d gone again, catching him off guard and doing things he didn’t quite know how to react to. He figured he should probably say something, offer some more words of comfort. Or maybe she was trying to comfort him?

“Hey, PG, you hungry?”

“Yeah, a little.”

“Cool,” She stood up to fetch her food bag from the other side of the campfire and he found that he felt just a little bit colder without her sitting beside him. “Hey Preston?”

“Yes, General,”

“Thanks for being here with me.”

“Anytime, sir.”


End file.
